STACK #151 May 2017

CINEMA FEATURE

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FIREFIGHT IR REFIGHT IR F GH E ssex-born Ben Wheatley is part of a select group of British filmmakers – and it was a script I’d been thinking about for years.” That’s not to say making Free Fire didn’t British writer-director Ben Wheatley’s new film, the action-thriller Free Fire , pays homage to John Carpenter and enlists the services of Martin Scorsese. He spoke with Scott Hocking.

response. “I did a similar tour with High-Rise and the end of the screenings were always good, and also a bit ‘what the f–k was that?’ But with Free Fire there was a lot more cheering and everyone was happy, so that was a relief,” he tells STACK . After the tough job of adapting Ballard, was he looking for something a little less complicated for his next project? “I wanted to do

come with its own set of challenges, not least creating the protracted firefight that occupies most of the movie. “It has to be really specifically written because it’s not just people shooting, it’s a tight structure of mini-missions and objectives," he explains. "Also the way people

which includes Edgar Wright, Neil Jordan and Peter Strickland – whose distinctive, offbeat films are defined by a love of genre and attract a strong cult following. Wheatley’s trademark is the absurd

perspective and black humour he brings to the most serious of subjects, from serial killers in his 2012 feature Sightseers to the breakdown of social order in his recent adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s High-Rise . His latest film, Free Fire , is an absurdist take on the siege movie set within the confines of a seedy Boston warehouse, where a botched arms deal erupts into a sustained shootout between a high calibre cast that includes Cillian Murphy, Brie Larson, Sharlto Copley and Armie Hammer. Wheatley took Free Fire on a tour of the UK prior to its release to gauge audience

something action-related that was more straight visuals,” he says. “ High- Rise had the heavy weight of dealing with lots of characters and lots of weird geography – it was a hard film to make and Free Fire was a bit more genre. I always have a lot of scripts on the go at any one time,

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MAY 2017

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